Queen of the skies

Did anyone hear if AC got hacked? Did any data get stolen?

canadiancow

Do you have reason to believe they did?

Stranger

The meltdown they had could have been the result of a penetration, and ransom, I suppose? The thought had not occurred to me, but impossible it is not. And surely they would not tell you.

KenHamer

Were there any improvements to the webstite?

If not there probably was no hack.

jaysona

That's quite a stretch to make, especially in the absence of anything published anywhere.

Fiordland

I think it safe to assume Air Canada is a very big target. Lots of personal information (peoples address, passport numbers etc.) and lots of credit card transactions.

I also think it is safe to assume that most of these hackers are motivated by money and therefore to steal data over an extended period of time not necessarily bring down the system.

The ones that are paid by foreign governments and not motivated by money probably have politically bigger targets to go after than Air Canada.

jaysona

The notion that AC is a target is not a stretch by any means, however to suggest/imply that the outage a couple of weeks ago was related to a hack of any sort is a stretch given the absence of anything published to that effect *anywhere*

Bohemian1

Never ascribe to malice that which is the result of incompetence.

Stranger

Of course. I merely said, not impossible. As a followup.

canadiancow

I'm not going to start a thread with that as the title unless (until?) I have even a shred of evidence that I'm willing to share.

Fiordland

Agreed.

Stranger

The OP made it sound like he might...

canadiancow

Then share it...

balexis

Also, recovering from a successful hack/ransomware/whatever attack in a matter of hours is incompatible with AC's IT department reputation. It would even be a tough one for an organisation with mature cybersecurity processes and teams in place...

Transpacificflyer

Let's consider what we do know;
Under multiple privacy and public company regulatory laws, Air Canada is obliged to declare if and when it has been hacked and the confidential information of customers or suppliers has been accessed and potentially stolen. Some jurisdictions require the target of such attacks to provide advisory and credit monitoring services to victims. Air Canada does store passport and visa information in addition to credit card data.
I am confident that if an event involving unauthorized access to confidential client data occurred we would know about it. While Canada is not known for protecting the rights of consumers, the EU and the USA do care.

We also know that on any given day foreign state sponsored and sanctioned hackers target Canadian companies. It wasn't too long ago that the Chinese government's agents mounted a full assault on Revenue Canada and have regularly gone after multiple companies. It's been going on for years;
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...ticle34485219/
We also know that Russian hackers have targeted Canadian infrastructure entities previously with Hydro Quebec repeatedly targeted because of its power supply to the eastern USA. As Air Canada is a central part of Canada's strategic airlift reserve, it is not unusual for the Russians to target the company. They have done it in the past. Hostile agent attacks will not necessarily be declared if client info has not been accessed or if there is a national security reason not to declare the attack. However, since we know that IT personnel talk about confidential info, it is a fairly good bet that such a hack would eventually be revealed. Someone somewhere will talk. One just has to sit and wait it out.